1 Feb 2017

Super Nintendo hacked pad for Virtual Boy

Virtual Boy controllers are quite uncommon so I had to find an alternative solution.

The NES, SNES and Virtual Boy share the same serial communication protocol with few differences :
- NES controllers only send 1 byte of data (8 bits) whereas SNES and Virtual Boy controllers send 2 bytes of data (16 bits) due to the fact they have more buttons
- Button mapping is slightly different between the SNES and the VB (well not really if you look at the physical position of buttons, the left D-pad of the VB corresponding to buttons B/A/Y/X on the SNES pad)

In order to build my adapter I pulled a SNES controller port from a dead unit and for the plug on the VB side I used a NES one I cut a little to make it fit in the VB port:

The adapter also includes the PSU plug of the SNES (with the Graëtz bridge and the 7805).